Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Dolezal, Knowledge, and Belief

R. C. writes,

I hadn't heard of the Dolezal case until reading your blog post. It occurred to me that this case might serve as a counterexample to the standard epistemological position that belief is necessary for knowledge.

I don't know Dolezal's psychological/epistemic state. But suppose she knows that she isn't African-American by race, but she has convinced herself to believe she is so. Would she have knowledge without belief?

Perhaps yes. Or perhaps she doesn't really believe she is African-American by race. Or, perhaps she is double minded: one mind knows and thus believes she isn't, and the other lacks knowledge on the matter but believes she is.

Anyway, I'd be interested in your take.

As I construe his example, the loyal reader is offering a case in which a subject knows that p without believing that p. Thus he is supposing that Dolezal knows that she is Caucasian, but does not believe that she is. If so, we have a counterexample to the standard view that, necessarily, if S knows that p, then S believes that p. On the standard analysis, believing that p is necessary for knowing that p. What the example suggests is that believing that p is not necessary for knowing that p.

We should distinguish between a weaker and a stronger thesis:

1. It is not the case that knowledge entails belief. (Some cases of knowledge are not cases of belief.)

Belief I understand to be some degree of readiness to act as if such and such (the content believed) were the case. Everyone concedes that one can believe where one does not know. But it is now widely assumed that you cannot know what you do not believe. Hence the well known analysis of knowledge as "justified, true belief." But this seems to me, as it has to numerous others, to be a mistake. Belief is, as Hume correctly held, a passion. It is something that happens to us. Thought, observation and testing, even knowledge itself, can be sources of belief, and indeed should be. But one may actually know (dispositionally, occurrently) without believing what one knows.

Whether or not one believes what one represents truly and has an appropriate basis for so representing, depends on factors that are irrelevant to truth, understanding and evidence. It depends, one might simply say, on how rational one is. Now I do not think that this point about belief in relation to knowledge is essential to the rest of this paper, but I mention it to indicate that the absence of any reference to belief in my general description of knowledge is not an oversight. Belief is not, I think, a necessary component of knowledge, though one would like to believe that knowledge would have some influence upon belief, and no doubt it often does.

Now we can't get into Dolezal's (crazy) head, but the following is plausibly ascribed to her. She knows who her biological parents are; she knows that they are both Caucasian; she knows that Caucasian parents have Caucasian children; hence she knows that she is biologically Caucasian. Could she nonetheless really believe that she is not Caucasian?

Perhaps. Belief is tied to action. It is tied to what one does and leaves undone and what one is disposed to do and leave undone. Dolezal's NAACP activities and her verbal avowals among other behaviors suggest that she really believes that she is racially black.

But if Dolezal really believes that she is racially black, when she knows that she is racially white, then she is irrational. Why not say the following by way of breaking the link between belief and knowledge:

D1. S knows that p =df S justifiably accepts that p, and p is true.

D2. S believes that p =df S accepts that p and S either acts as if p is true or is prepared to act as if p is true.

These definitions allow that there are cases of knowledge that are not cases of belief without excluding cases of knowledge that are cases of belief. What is common to knowledge and belief is not belief, but acceptance.

Comments

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I have yet to encounter a counterexample that convincingly refutes Plato's TJB definition of knowledge. Is Dolezal's case one such a convincing counterexample? I don't think so.

The following observations is in order: we are talking here about "propositional knowledge" and not such other variants of knowledge as "knowing how, what, who, etc.," which may or may not be reducible to the propositional case. Hence, according to TJB, the relevant notion of belief is "propositional belief": i.e., a belief relation between a knowing agent, a propositional content, and a temporal interval.

Therefore, the following is a consequence of TJB:

(*) If x knows that ____, then x Believes that ____.

where in the two placeholders '___' the exact same propositions must be inserted.

What about the Dolezal's case? Her case requires us to distinguish between two concepts of identity: biological identity vs. psychological identity. Biological identity refers to the identity of a person by virtue of biological circumstances of birth, which is determined by the biological identity of the parents (e.g., Caucasian, Black, etc.,). Biological identity is hereditary. Psychological identity, by contrast, refers to a certain prototype involving a common experience of a group of people, a common style of life such as looks, behavior, goals, etc. Psychological identity need not be hereditary, although it could be passed on from one generation to the next through culturization.

Now, let us consider the following two propositions, ignoring the well-known problems with first person reference:

P. My biological identity is Caucasian.

P*. My psychological identity is Black.

One and the same person can consistently hold both P and P* and I think this is exactly what happened in Dolezal's case. So Dolezal knows that P, and therefore believes that P; but simultaneously also believes that P*. I do not see this case as a convincing counterexample to TJB.

Can we say that for ideal cases, knowledge = justified true acceptance plus willingness to act (i.e., JTB) but for less than ideal cases, knowledge = justified true acceptance without willingness to act?

In this way, we might distinguish between rational/responsible knowledge and irrational/irresponsible knowledge.

I'm also wondering what worldview would motivate a person to such irrationality.

Perhaps it's a brand of physicalism which says there is no self/person, or at least no enduring self/person. There's only the brain, nervous system, and attending body parts. This physical system changes from moment to moment. So the physical thing that once had certain features (e.g., light skin, straight light hair) is now a different thing with other features (e.g., tan skin, curly dark hair). There's no continuity of person, and thus no problem.

Or maybe it's postmodernism. There's no absolute truth, no truth as "correspondence with reality." Only power matters. If one can acquire more power by changing one's physical features, then do it. Get the power.

Or maybe it's sentimentalism. Only the gratification of desires and feelings matters. If one can gratify his desires and feelings by making certain changes, then do it. Truth doesn't matter.